Inside Top40, the Hottest Underground Party in L.A.

Revelers at Top40, an underground party in a bowling alley in Highland Park that is drawing L.A.'s creative set. Credit Angie Smith

Meghan Edwards is gyrating atop a speaker box to the thumping music played by Max D, a Baltimore house D.J. who has come to Los Angeles to play Top40, the pop-up party Edwards has been throwing intermittently since February. The setting is a converted bowling alley in Highland Park called Mr. T’s. When Edwards strips off her shirt to go topless, it doesn’t seem out of the ordinary. Everyone keeps grooving on the dance floor. It wouldn’t be Top40 if things didn’t get a little sloppy.

Edwards, 30, has become an impresario of the L.A. party circuit, fusing the best of the L.A. performance and nightlife worlds. Dancers, musicians, D.J.s, performance artists and club kids all come to Top40. On any given night, a local D.J. like Colored Craig will spin soulful Chicago house and Detroit techno, then pause for a performance break by the L.A. choreographer Ryan Heffington. When that’s over, someone will shout, “D.J., put the music back on!” Top40 is the kind of party that’s perpetually coming apart at the seams, which is exactly the kind of confounding madness a party needs to be fun.

And fun it is. Last Saturday’s party, a co-production between Top40 and the sneaker brand British Knights was curated by Gene’s Liquor, a West Coast dance label and online retailer. On the dance floor, three people were planning an orgy. Nearby, a girl with wild braids (braids are à la mode in the L.A. underground) showed off outré dance moves; the evening demonstrated the extent to which L.A. has become a haven for contemporary dance (one of Top40’s co-curators is the local choreographer Jos McKain). The night typically ends by 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., though many attendees keep the party going at apartments or after-hours clubs.

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Scenes from last Saturday night's festivities. Credit Angie Smith

This was the 13th night of a 22-night run. The nights blur together for Edwards (earlier this year, she did 40 nights’ worth of parties — hence the Top40 moniker — in a former art gallery in nearby Boyle Heights, resting only on Sundays and Mondays). Though she calls herself a “cultural producer,” she says that she is “first and foremost a musician.” Her indie-electronic band Miss M.E has played unannounced on several nights during the current series of parties.

Clubs in Paris and New York have been hounding Edwards to lend a touch of the L.A. underground to their cities, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles has invited her to bring Top40 above ground for a curated event in the coming months. She’s mulling her options — but first, she’s off to Berlin to play shows as Miss M.E. Whatever she does, it’s sure to be a wild time. “It’s not about conceptual anarchy, it’s about being able to imagine something completely and execute it,” she says. “It’s about the process of activating your imagination.”